future of xfs, oss.sgi.com after sgi purchased?

[Felix Blyakher]

On Apr 15, 2009, at 4:23 PM, Linda A. Walsh wrote:

> Not one to beat about the bush, but curious from a practical sense,
>
> If sgi is being bought by another company, is there any idea about  
> the plans
> for the xfs file system or the source code on 'oss.sgi.com'?

The rumors of the death of xfs team at SGI are a little bit
premature.

> I'm _guessing_ that there is some interest in users and developers  
> to keep xfs alive after the 'sgi' moniker is purchased, but that  
> begs the question about the new company wanting to support the old  
> 'sgi.com' websites including
> oss.sgi.com.
>
> Is there a danger of oss.sgi.com suddenly being yanked offline with  
> little to no warning,

I doubt it'll happen in any circumstances.

> such that community members should start keeping up-to-date, or is  
> it already mirrored?  I'm assuming that the current source code  
> repository only exists on oss.sgi.com?

There is nothing on oss.sgi.com xfs-wise that is not in Linus' tree.

> Should it be mirrored on some other external open-source site?   
> sourceforge? google? mozilla?

With git you don't really need a true mirror. And official clones of
both kernel and the userland xfs already exist on kernel.org.

> Is completely worthless to discuss new, desired features in some of  
> the utils? Will it be possible to support the xfs codebase if its  
> development no longer becomes necessary to sgi (or its parent  
> company)?

I hope that wouldn't happen. Though, while it'll be loss for xfs
in this unlikely scenario, I think, there is enough critical mass
outside of sgi to continue support and move forward xfs.

Felix
xfs maintainer, still at sgi